Water communion

I am blessed. Last night, after a week of occasionally heavy downpours, I walked from my house to the Milwaukee County Grounds where I was treated to one of the more spectacular sunsets I have had the pleasure to witness. Brilliantly lit by the setting sun, a thunderhead moved off to the north, still visibly drenching the earth below it. The sun on the horizon in the west lit up the underside of the thunderstorm and created an intense perpendicular rainbow, like a scene from Close Encounters. (The image, shot with my iPhone, doesn't do it justice!)

Caught up in the spectacle, I didn't stop at the time to think further about the thunderstorm or the role that rain plays in the water cycle. But the theme of the service at church this morning brought that image into sharper focus, metaphorically speaking. I am a member of Unitarian Universalist Church West (UUCW) and it was our annual "Water Communion" service, which signals the start of the church year.

Smallmouth bass, Riveredge Nature Center, Mke River, 5/16

The Water Communion is a ritual that symbolizes not only the importance of water to all of life but also the spiritual community of the congregation. Congregants are encouraged to bring water to church that comes from a place we have visited over the summer or that represents a meaningful event that happened. During the ritual people pour their offering into a common bowl, mingling the waters.

The litany that accompanied the ritual included this: "We bring water water of sunrise and new beginnings..., water of harvest and sunset; the sweat of a job well done; the tears of endings..., water of quiet and peace...." We paused in meditation, to reflect on our water, its source and its meanings in our personal lives. As I reflected on this I was struck, not for the first time, by how much my life is blessed. I have been privileged with experiences relating to waters both near and far. 

Kayaking the Menomonee River, 5/16

Here I offer a selection of images and brief reflections. (The links embedded in the text will take you to previous blog posts.) I fulfilled a long-time goal in May of kayaking the Menomonee River. In the process I found it to be surprisingly wild even given my already high expectations. The smallmouth bass (above) was caught by naturalists at Riveredge Nature Center as part of World Fish Migration Day.

It's true that I saw many scenes involving Lake Michigan that were quite similar to this one. But in June I had the great fortune to spend the solstice in Finland. This sunset occurred at approx. 11:45 pm. over the Gulf of Finland. I was on a cruise-ship-size ferry on my way from Helsinki to...

St. Petersburg, Russia. The highlight of my two days there was the Hermitage, seen here from across the Neva River.

The UUCW house band played Joni Mitchell's The Circle Game for the Water Communion. I hadn't heard it in years:

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

"A community is a network of relationships and the places where those relationships interact."

Water and more specifically the Kinnickinnic River was the theme of my most important art exhibit of the year. Concrete River: Memorial and Promise on the Kinnickinnic, a collaboration with Melanie Ariens, opened at the Alfons Gallery in May and ran through July. Collaboration continued when the dance duo of Andrea and Daniel Burkholder, pictured here, performed a site-specific dance created especially to harmonize with the exhibit.

And while the Concrete River exhibit showcased the planned rehabilitation of the KK River, it was gratifying to see the last stretch of concrete channel finally disappear from the Menomonee River this summer (near the stadium, visible in the distance).

The limestone ledges and cliffs of the Niagara escarpment along Green Bay framed a week at The Clearing, a self-styled "Folk School" where I attended a writer's workshop in July. Along with few (well, more than a few) photos, I returned with a water-related haiku:

sitting on stone

scent of cedar

clear horizon

August was a busy month and water was a constant theme. On August 7 the Milwaukee Water Commons staged its annual We Are Water celebration on Bradford Beach.

"People want more community these days because contemporary life in mainstream America can be pretty discouraging. We're bombarded every day by messages that promote individualistic behavior--and the more disconnected we feel the more...we consume." To me these words from the Water Communion service extend beyond the human community to include all life.

Because we are an activist denomination, the Water Communion included a call to action. One of this summer's actions was the second annual "Convergence at the Confluence" rally to promote oil train safety. It took place at the confluence of the Menomonee and Milwaukee Rivers on August 14.

"In community we lend our strength and support to one another--in community we can do things we could never do alone!"

August 25 marked the centennial anniversary of the founding of the National Park Service. I marked the occasion by visiting the closest National Park to Milwaukee, Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. There, along with some of those Lake Michigan horizons, I discovered a wealth of other habitats, including this wetland called the Great Marsh (although the discerning eye will note that it is in fact a swamp!) (It's the trees.)

September got off to a watery start when I decided to explore the Root River sections of the Oak Leaf Trail for the first time. Here you see it in high water, a condition that will be far more common when the Waukesha water diversion project is implemented and that community's wastewater will be dumped into the Root River.

Another quote from the Water Communion: "The water we have gathered comes from the world's far corners and our own kitchen sinks. It is as salty as tears, as cool as a deep spring, as turbulent as a rushing river, as calm as a deep blue lake."

My most recent water-related adventure was just yesterday, when I led a stalwart group of Sierra Club members on a guided hike along the Menomonee River. In the rain. I was concerned that no one would show up. It being the Sierra Club, however, they knew what to wear and we all enjoyed the wet. An Englishman named Alfred Wainwright is credited with a saying I am fond of recalling in these situations: "There is no such thing as bad weather, just unsuitable clothing."

One of the hymns we sang for the Water Communion included this line: "When our heart is in a holy place we are blessed with love and amazing grace." I saved what I consider my most amazing photo for last. It is an undoctored image of the sun rising out of Lake Michigan.

I am blessed. The best week of the summer was not my voyage to the foreign shores of Finland but, as I said, right here on our own Great Lake. I spent a very relaxing week staring at that horizon. I saw the sun rise each day. Each day it was different and new. It looked like this only once. My heart was in a holy place that day. (And my camera was on a tripod!)

But one last water story. My favorite.

Until she started school for the first time last week I took care of my granddaughter once a week, as I've done for the past 4 years. The best day of my week was when Lynncita came to play with me. On hot days in the summer we liked to walk to Hoyt Park Pool. Even in cold weather when all we have is the sink, she enjoys playing with water. This summer she invented a new game. I would fill the watering can with water from the hose and then she would pour the water into pails. Then she lifted the pails and dropped them to watch the water splash. There is nothing like a 4-year-old to make you feel young again!

One warm day she was doing her pail splashing thing over and over, continually asking me for more water. Then suddenly, with no warning or hint of her intentions, instead of dropping the lifted pail she turned it upside down over her head. I watched as she sputtered and wiped her eyes, wondering what would come after. She erupted with the most gleeful chortling laugh.

And then she did it again. And again...

I did not get a still photo of it. But you can see it on YouTube.

I promise it will make you smile.

I do feel blessed.

Nature and Community: Reviving the Spirit

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On a trip through the high Sierras John Muir came upon a particularly lovely glen with a river running through it. He climbed a large boulder in the river, which he likened to an altar. After musing upon the power of spring floods to move boulders he rhapsodized about moss, the clear pool, blossoming lilies and light coming through overarching leaves. “The place seemed Holy,” he concluded, “where one might hope to see God.”¹

Muir was hardly the first to equate nature with holiness. His descriptions of wilderness experiences often bordered on spiritual ecstasy and yet they were paired with keen phenomenological observations and precise taxonomic identification of plants and animals he encountered. Muir clearly was comfortable blending empirical science with personal theology. His rigorously analytical mind was open to mysticism.

I recently picked up a volume of Muir’s writing, thinking it was time for me to revisit his perspective on nature. I’d been asked to talk about the spiritual component of my urban wilderness escapades. It was not the first such request I’d received and, like Muir, I recognize and welcome the spiritual dimension of my own examinations of nature, urban and otherwise.

When I first began to explore the Menomonee River for my book, Urban Wilderness, my impulse was analytical and documentary. My episodic travels would take me nowhere that hadn’t been thoroughly mapped as well as completely altered by hundreds of years of human activity. Nevertheless, in a very real sense it was a journey of discovery. Among the many surprises of that endeavor was the spiritual presence I felt in undeniably compromised remnants of nature.

No matter where I went in the watershed I could find pockets of blessed tranquility, whether a grove of stately trees, a marshy oxbow in the river, or a sunny meadow enlivened with a chorus of birdsong.

Unlike Muir’s, my wilderness has been interwoven inextricably with an urban fabric. My spiritual experiences may not have been quite as ecstatic as his, but they are no less real. I discovered that I didn’t have to travel to the high Sierras to encounter the sublime or to consider nature sacred. As I wandered along the rivers I did occasionally have to ignore the sounds of traffic from a freeway somewhere out of sight. However, this was not only possible but became an essential element of my spiritual practice. Muir, undisturbed by the mosquitoes in his wilderness, said, “Imagination gives us the sweet music of tiniest insect wings….”²

Now, however, the request to speak of the spirit inherent in my artistic practice made me pause. Fifteen years ago, when I “discovered” the Menomonee Valley it truly was an urban wilderness. It’s wild state and my imagination enabled me to savor the sublime. Today, I find those same places transformed and “civilized.” In my role as resident artist in the Menomonee Valley, I suddenly realized, I had relinquished the very wildness that had first attracted me there.

The original Valley environment, a broad marsh of wild rice, had been first trampled, then tamed and, finally, abandoned by human industry. Wildlife had gradually re-inhabited the vacated landscape. In the shadows of viaducts a forest grew up around crumbling buildings. Coyotes prowled through meadows of wildflowers. A peregrine falcon perched atop a disused chimney, terrifying songbirds in the bushes below. Ironically, of all the places I visited in the watershed, the unlikeliest, the industrial valley, was among the wildest. That wildness was both muse and spiritual touchstone. This was my Sierra!

Fifteen years after my first explorations of it the Valley is in the midst of yet another transformation. The forest has been trimmed to a riparian fringe. A conventionally landscaped industrial park has replaced the meadows. The newly created parklands and the rehabilitated river are lovely, of course. They also are vital and inspiring. But only with an exceedingly generous imagination can they be called wild. Reluctantly, when describing the Menomonee Valley I now resist the term, “urban wilderness” that so motivated my earlier artistic practice.

But, in the absence of wildness, what has become of the spiritual dimension of my practice? In the current issue of Orion magazine Paul Kingsnorth wrestles with the same question: “On wild hilltops…I have pulled at the edges of some great force that seems way beyond me, a force that seems embedded in the world itself; the wild world of beauty and complexity and dark magic that my kind are busy destroying and replacing with a culture of future-worship and straight lines. If anything is sacred…surely it is this thing we call ‘nature.’”³

Of all places in Milwaukee the Menomonee Valley arguably has suffered the most from this tendency to replace a wild and fertile nature with the straight lines of mechanized “civilization.” Clearly, the chance to experience a sublime version of wild nature, in the tradition of Muir, is now more remote. And yet, I am not discouraged. Far from it!

The Valley no longer is a wild rice marsh, but neither is it the unrelieved industrial zone that replaced that marsh. More importantly, I believe, we citizens of Milwaukee no longer are the people who tore down the limestone bluffs to crush the marsh. We are beginning to envision a city where industry and nature can coexist. Not only here in Milwaukee, but across the globe, we are part of a nascent but burgeoning movement, a shift in thinking away from the binary either/or of wilderness vs. civilization. We see a “third way” of integrating the two.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy New York City has been forced to grapple with the need for an integrated approach to rebuilding. In the same issue of Orion Meera Subramanian asserts, “It seems increasingly clear that there may be a third way: an approach that blends a trace of conciliation with an abundance of creativity, using hints from the ecological past to design the coastlines of the future.”⁴

You don’t need a hurricane-ravaged coast to appreciate the wisdom of this new approach. Hints from our ecological past and, yes, an abundance of creativity have informed the redevelopment of the Menomonee Valley. What has made this new transformation possible is as old as the origins of human culture: a concern for community.

In modern Western culture the human community, beginning with its so-called “Enlightenment,” has been led away from natural communities. The separation of humankind and “nature” was always artificial. No, the ecologies of cities and of forests are not comparable, but at its core ecology teaches the importance of interconnections. Although Western cultural tradition led us unilaterally to disassociate ourselves from nature—with tragic and global consequences for both sides of the equation—we can never really sever the human from the natural. Global climate change is teaching us that human communities are not sustainable without reintegration with the ecological community.

Have I digressed from my theme of finding something spiritual in my work? Not at all. Like a voyage of discovery, a spiritual quest veers in directions dictated by winds of contingency and circumstance, rather than a predetermined plan. Just as my earlier exploration of the Menomonee River watershed led to unforeseen spiritual insights, so too has this new endeavor. I too am “pulled at the edges of some great force that seems way beyond me.” But the windswept hilltops where I feel this power are not wild but bulldozed into shape, engineered by imagination and human agency.

That great force is embedded in the faces of the people; people who care deeply about this place. Some of them are visionaries boldly determined to create a future worth worshiping. Others are newcomers to the Valley, welcomed into it by the latest transformation. In their eyes I see the marvel of discovery: that the straight lines of civilization can intersect with the lyrical curves of nature.

And so my spiritual quest turns full circle; my faith in the human community complements and deepens my enchantment with the earth. The sacredness of nature isn’t diminished when we recognize our own worth. If anything is sacred, surely it is this thing we call ‘human.’

Science and industry have granted us the power to shape the world in ways previous generations couldn’t imagine. But in order to wield that power for the benefit of the community it takes a human heart and human spirit. As with the coastal modifications being done along the Long Island shore, the transformation underway in the Menomonee Valley integrates the human community with a restored natural environment. Urban, economic redevelopment is complemented with sensitivity to ecological systems.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. envisioned a Beloved Community “in which all people can share in the wealth of the earth.”⁵ People yearn for that inclusive and joyful community, consciously or not. In the Menomonee Valley there is a conscious attempt to create it. That community is not only visionary, it is sacred.

This post is one in a series that relates to my Menomonee Valley Artist in Residency. For more information about the residency and links to previous posts and photographs, go to MV AiR.

Notes:

1. Muir: Nature Writings, 1997.

2. The Wilderness World of John Muir, 2001

3. Kingsnorth, Orion Mar/Apr 2014

4. ibid.

5. TheKingCenter.org

The two photos at the top are from Urban Wilderness: Exploring a Metropolitan Watershed, Center for American Places, 2008. The other three are Adam, Laura and Omar: 2014.

Winter solstice ceremony on Milwaukee’s lakefront

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“We are all connected.” ~ John Clifford, Lakota Elder, Congregation of the Great Spirit

On this the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, the sun never did rise.

Even the city, its towers enveloped in mist, seemed ephemeral.

We had come to Milwaukee’s lakefront to bear witness to the solstice, to honor the earth and its peoples, and to offer up special prayers for life-sustaining water. The ceremony was led by members of the Congregation of the Great Spirit, who engage in the ancient rituals four times a year, at the solstices and equinoxes. Out of respect for the sacred rites and offerings, I willingly complied with their request to refrain from photographing during the ceremony itself. (I shot all the accompanying photos either before or after the ceremony.)

We gathered under a great tree near the site of the old coast guard station, which had been used by the Indian community from 1971 to 1983. John Clifford, a Lakota Elder, began by explaining the importance of the site as well as the importance of the tree as a symbol of the unity of earth and sky.

Clifford lit an aromatic offering of tobacco and sage. We gathered at the tree. The first offering was to the “spider spirits,” black, white, gray, and gentle, which protect this sacred site. We then faced each of the cardinal directions in turn. Tiny bundles of tobacco were placed at the base of the tree. Prayers were spoken. The four cardinal directions are associated with colors, with the elements of earth, air, fire, and water. They also represent the four ages of humankind, new life, youth, adulthood, and the elders.

The solemnity of the ritual was maintained despite the intrusions of daily life: the sound of traffic on Lincoln Memorial Drive, dogs crunching through the frozen snow as they chased each other, joggers coming down off the pedestrian bridge/ramp. There was one brief perturbation of the mood when a colorful truck parked nearby with loudspeakers blaring “Jingle Bells” sung—barked that is—by dogs.

 

I discovered later that this was a business that offers sled dog rides in the park.

The emphasis was on water in in keeping with a Global Day of Prayer for Water organized by Milwaukee Riverkeeper and the Congregation of the Great Spirit. The most important message I heard during the ceremony was when Clifford invoked “all of my relatives.” By that he meant the earth and all people because, he said, “We are all connected.”

A free spirit? an omen? a kite caught in a tree. Everything is connected. I'm sure of it.

This is one of a pair of posts in honor of the Winter Solstice. The other is a reprise of my solstice story from Urban Wilderness: Exploring a Metropolitan Watershed.